It could all have been so different. Had Britney Spears' comeback performance at the MTV Video Music Awards been what it should have been – a triumphant statement of intent from the defining popstar of the late nineties and early noughties – we'd all be hailing the return of a musical icon after two-and-a-half years of divorce, rehab and the most infamous barber shop incident since Sweeney Todd. Instead, after a listless embarrassment of a stage show, in which the woman who's been memorising song and dance routines since her Mickey Mouse Club days wasn't even able to remember the words, Spears just seems like a lost little girl: the popstar who's hell-bent on making up for her lost adolescence by playing it out as a 25-year-old mother-of-two.

But somehow, out of personal chaos, pop greatness has emerged. Producer Nate 'Danja' Hills – a protege of hitmaker du jour Timbaland - melds tack-sharp beats and a deliciously scuzzy bassline to create a dancefloor throb that, if you manage to block the VMAs out of your mind, feels devilishly sexy. Spears, meanwhile, gets all 'Slave 4 U' on us, moaning and groaning about "cameras flashing while we're dirty dancing". A telling line, that - even when she's getting jiggy in a nightclub, Spears is thinking about who's watching her and how it's being recorded. As things stand, whether 'Gimme More' is destined to become the last great Britney single, or rather the springboard for the second phase of Spears' career, seems to be entirely up to her.